All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(79)

I retreated into the kitchenette, and Dad followed. The belt buckle glinted where it was buried in his palm. The belt itself swung back and forth like a snake. Like a dead snake. Like a hypnotized snake, I wanted to say, and the thought burbled up with the threat of hysterical laughter. No, that nasty voice whispered to me. Not hypnotized, no swirly lines in those eyes, not now, not at your age. Not even when you were a kid, but definitely not now. You know why you stay. You know why you don’t run, why you don’t fight back, why you take it. You take it every time. And you take it because you know you’re one fucking piece of shit. You take it because you know he’s right. You take it because you deserve it.

The belt whipped up, back, and out. It hit me across the jaw and the side of the face. The pop was so loud I thought I’d gone deaf, and the blow swung my head to the side, but there wasn’t any pain. Not for the first heartbeat. Then it rushed in, turning one side of my face to fire. I crashed backwards against the freestanding range, and it rocked under my weight.

“I said, boy, where you been?” The belt whipped out again, cracking against my neck this time, and I grunted. My throat felt thick all of the sudden, and I was breathing through a straw, thin breaths that couldn’t fill my lungs. “You got responsibilities.” The belt whipped forward again, and this time I raised an arm to shield my face. The belt wrapped halfway around my wrist, and the shirt offered small padding. The end of the belt, though, licked the corner of my eye as it came around. Jesus, a panicked part of my brain screamed. He would have taken out my eye. He would have fucking blinded me if I hadn’t put my arm up.

“Get that fucking arm out of my way,” Dad roared. He yanked on the belt, and the force of the movement jerked me forward as the belt tangled around my arm. Dad swung with his free hand this time, cuffing me on the side of the head. The blow connected with the same ear that Jake had hit earlier.

Somehow Dad had gotten the belt free. Off balance, I fell forward, and Dad took advantage of my movement. Planting both fists in my back, he launched me into the living room. I crashed into the sofa, folded at the waist, and rolled over it. The belt followed a moment later, licking the vinyl with a soft thwap and missing my face by an inch. For just a moment, a puff of the leather smell hit my nose. Then the pressure from the blow ran through the vinyl, transferring its force into my body. Just stay still, a part of me shrieked. Don’t move, don’t breathe, don’t blink. If you just don’t move, maybe he won’t see you. If you just don’t move, maybe it’ll stop. Those were the thoughts of every terrified animal whose last line of sight ended in a pair of headlights.

And that other voice, that terrible, nightmare voice from the edge, said, Yes, stay still. Slap on your cartoon eyes, those swirly cartoon eyes, and stare up at him when he comes around that corner. Stare up at him, and see that face with its mockery of stern-but-fair love, and know that you stayed for this, you stayed still for this, and that’s because you want it, that’s because deep down, all the way at the bottom where you can’t lie to yourself anymore, you know you deserve it.

I rolled off the sofa, landing on hands and knees, but that was as far as I got. I tucked my head down, wrapped my arms up and over, and made myself as small as possible. His steps shook the floor. Linoleum squeaked as he turned, his socks brushed the carpet. A tinny, squeak-squeak, like a rusty hinge turning in the wind, came from the belt buckle as he rolled his wrist. Squeak-squeak. Squeak-squeak. Squeak-squeak. That’s right, I thought in my panic. Just like a rusty hinge, turning, and turning, and turning, because the wind is blowing, the wind is howling, a hinge on door on a barn painted red, dark red, blood red, and God isn’t that wind just howling, squeak-squeak, squeak-squeak, squeak—

Thwap. The belt cracked across my back so hard that, for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t even force out my breath. The pain cut so deeply, from shoulder to hip, that I was sure he had torn through my shirt. I was sure the belt had sunk an inch deep into my flesh, a clean, deep track the way tires leave ruts in fresh snow. And then I couldn’t think about that image of tires and snow or anything else because I was screaming: one long, agonized scream that I had tried so hard to keep pent up.

Dad knew that scream pretty damn well, and he knew when it was time to take a breath, sit back, enjoy his work. The belt rasped, leather on leather, as he looped it around his fist. “Quit wailing,” he said. “You’re going to get every goddamn cat in the county up around here trying to fuck your goddamn leg if you keep making that noise. Quit it, I said.” Yanking my hair so that my head tilted, exposing my face, he dug his fingers into my jaw. “Quit it.”

And I did. I quit it. Somehow, again, for the hundredth or the thousandth time in my life, I quit it. I ground my teeth together. I blinked my eyes clear. A tremor racked my body, but that was just adrenaline and loose nerves and out of my control. Even with Dad pinching my jaw, I managed to draw a breath. If I could get through this moment, and the next, and the next, I could survive until morning. And if I could survive until morning, I could—

With an ease that belied his beer-belly and his loose teeth and the sores on his lips, he dragged me up by the jaw and tossed me back onto the sofa. “I wanted this to be a civilized talk, baby boy. I wanted it to be genteel. But would you let me? No. Not a goddamn snowball’s chance, no sir. I tried to talk to you, and you flew like a bat out of shittiest corner of hell. So, baby, you got nobody but yourself to blame for this. I got a heavy hand, and my dad had a heavy hand, but God Almighty if it isn’t what I needed and if it isn’t what you need. You listening?”